


Sword and Faith

by MalcolmInSpace



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Adeptas Sororitas, Applying Fire to Heretics, Chainswords, Female Space Marines, Gen, Heretics, Intestines, Military Science Fiction, Sisters of Battle, Space Marines, Unfeasibly Large Guns, puns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:59:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4309647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalcolmInSpace/pseuds/MalcolmInSpace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A world overrun with rebellion. A Space Marine and a Sororitas fight alongside against a threat greater than they imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sword and Faith

After six months of fighting, Aeredon City was in ruins, smashed and burning. Trooper Jacomo Potts didn’t mind, though. He’d lived in Aeredon until he was grown, and then he’d gone out to the potash fields for work. It had been out there that he’d heard the word of the Pilgrim Martial and learned about the taint that had infected the hearts of so many in Aeredon and across the planet. He had learned how that taint worked strongest on those who sought power, who sat in fancy offices and demanded taxes from the common working men and women. He learned how a taint could only be burned out, carved from corrupted flesh in the name of the Emperor Radiant. So Jacomo didn’t mind that his childhood home was burning, torn apart by artillery fire and pocked with las-rounds. Once they had cut out the taint and made Aeredon holy again, the Emperor Radiant would send His angels to rebuild the city into a just and kind place, where medicine was free and no-one had to sweat their lives away in the potash fields.

Ahead, Sergeant Kadri whistled low and waved the platoon forward. Kadri was a proper soldier, a veteran of one of the many PDF regiments who had joined the Pilgrim Martial’s cause. He was a good leader, even though his squad was half filled with faithful like Jacomo who had far more conviction than training. Kadri wasn’t that faithful himself. He didn’t wear the tattoos or join in the chants. Some of the faithful were suspicious of that, but the Pilgrim Martial said that the Emperor Radiant worked through all kinds of honest hands.

They were moving through what had once been a park and was now a shell-pocked pit of mud and tree stumps. Just a routine patrol through held ground, even if the thick haze of smoke and fog from the river cut visibility to almost nothing. Their brigade had been fighting other PDF, ones in service to the corrupt Aeredan government, for the last two weeks so Jacomo was grateful for quieter duty. Faithful troops had swept this neighbourhood clear in the early fighting and no enemy activity was expected. He could hear the distant crackling of lasfire, occasionally punctuated by a field piece’s boom.

“Think that’s from the Plaza?” Aerthur asked him. Aerthur was Jacomo’s friend. They been among the first faithful to volunteer to fight, and they’d gotten red ribbons from the Pilgrim Martial himself to prove it. Aerthur seemed to think this made them better than other faithful, or even than the regular soldiers.

Jacomo nodded. “Yeah. I heard the Colonel saying the corrupt are dug in deep there. I’m sure they’ll lose heart soon, though.”

Aerthur snorted and put a little swagger in his walk. Jacomo sighed. He knew the prelude to one of Aerthur’s homilies when he saw it. Aerthur opened his mouth, and then his head exploded.

The next moments were a blur. Jacomo found himself cowering behind a tree stump, face wet with Aerthur’s brains, rifle clenched in shaky hands. The battlefield was being ripped apart by explosions. At first Jacomo thought they’d been hit by mortar fire, until he realized it was bolter fire and his heart froze. Only the corrupt’s elite carried bolt weapons. He peeked over the stump and saw Sergeant Kadri trying to rally the platoon into a line, but hyper-accurate bolter fire was picking off anyone who broke cover. How could they see in the haze? Witchcraft, it had to be witchcraft.

Jacomo saw the suggestion of a shape moving in the haze, silhouetted by muzzle flares, and squeezed off a burst of lasfire. His aim was good, he was sure, but the bright scarlet bars just vanished into the night without effect. Then Reimsdyk got his stubber going and hammered the foe, who staggered and fell. That seemed to give the platoon life, and they began laying down a proper curtain of return fire. Even if they couldn’t see what they were shooting at.

Then came the fire.

The platoon had been flanked, and a roaring bar of fire reached out and ended a half dozen faithful in a stroke. The enemy came close now, close enough to see. They were clad in black plate emblazoned with the symbols of the corrupt and carried death in their hands. Grenades, close-range fire and bayonets ripped the platoon apart before they could turn and offer resistance. Jacomo saw Kadri, kneeling before one of the foe with his hands folded across his chest in the sign of the Deceiving Eagle and chanting something Jacomo couldn’t hear. It didn’t do any good, though. A chainsword hacked Kadri apart, his screams mingling with the sword’s howl. Jacomo died next, so focused on Kadri’s perfidy he almost didn’t notice the sarissa hack into his neck. He collapsed, visioning tunnelling. He hoped he would see the Emperor Radiant welcoming his sacrifice. Instead he died staring at a blank-eyed helmet marked with the fleur-de-lis.

 

Sister Mox, junior sister of the Order of the White Rose, Aeredon Priory, looked down at the dying heretic and felt very little except dull satisfaction. Before joining the Sororitas, she might have been horrified at the thought of taking a life. Before the start of this uprising, she would have rejoiced to act as the Emperor’s will made manifest in ending a heretic. Now she just felt tired. The heretic choked out a last breath, and Mox stepped over the corpse.

The heretics hadn’t had a chance to break and run before the Sororitas overran them. The few who tried had been shot down. The fog was barely an impediment to the sensors built into the Sabbat pattern helm. ‘Preysight illuminates all sins’ the saying went. Corpses were strewn across the field, broken and burst by bolt rounds or rent by blades or reduced to shrunken, twisted things in the heat of Sister Sabbatine’s heavy flamer. Superior Niobe was still standing over the body of the last heretic she’d kill. The man had been nearly cut in two by her chainsword. “I think this one was asking forgiveness,” she said distantly as Mox approached.

“And you didn’t think he deserved it?”

The Superior’s head came up, and even though they were both helmed Mox could feel the weight of her gaze, the same one she applied to a Sister who misremembered the words of a saint or dropped a round in firing drills. “A heretic who seeks redemption of their own will in their own time may be permitted penance before judgement. A heretic who begs forgiveness to stop the swing of the sword is a coward and will take that before the Emperor, too.”

 _You’d almost think she judges the insincerity worse than the heresy_ , Mox thought, but knew it was uncharitable. The Convent was a fortress, but it was also distanced from the main loyalist-held sectors and only aggressive, ceaseless fighting outside the walls kept that distance from becoming a formal siege. They were all tired, weary, those who weren’t dead already. And with the heretics in control of all long range communication they had no way of knowing what the situation was outside the city, let alone call for reinforcements.

“Sister Alyss is dead,” a voice reported over the squad comm. Atmospheric distortion and the ever-present jamming by the heretics buried any individuality from their voices. “Took a round right through her neck seal.”

“We will pray for her later, Sisters,” Niobe responded. “Take her weapons and distribute her ammunition. Then hide her body in those ruins. For now we push on to reconnoitre the vox network substation. We will recover her on our return.” If we return at all, no one said but everyone thought. The heretics had been dogged about their hold on the vox network and both the Sororitas and loyalist PDF had bled trying vainly to regain control.

The squad moved on, black-armoured wraiths in the night and fog, death in their hands and righteous purpose in their souls. But high above, past the all-covering bank of cloud and smoke and pollution that blanketed the city, vast starships clawed their way out of the Warp and took up stations in low orbit.

Jacomo had been right. The Emperor’s Angels were coming. He’d just been wrong about which side they were on.


End file.
